Feds: Another Tough Wildfire Season For West

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Fire officials are poised for a tough wildfire season after another dry winter across much of the West, and made more challenging because federal budget cuts mean fewer firefighters on the ground, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said Monday.

Jewell said automatic budget cuts mandated by Congress will force fire managers to make choices as they prioritize resources.

They also will have fewer resources to use on strategies designed to reduce future fire potential, such as prescribed burns and reseeding.

“We will fight the fires and we will do them safely,” Jewell said. “But the resources will go to suppression, which is not ideal. What you’re not doing is putting the resources in place to thoughtfully manage the landscape for the future.”

Jewell spent the past two days touring the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho the government’s national wildfire nerve center. She was joined by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who said the U.S. Forest Service alone will hire 500 fewer firefighters and deploy 50 fewer engines this season.

“We are going to be faced with a difficult fire season,” Vilsack said. “The bottom line is we’re going to do everything we can to be prepared. But folks need to understand … our resources are limited and our budgets are obviously constrained. We will do the best job we possibly can with the resources we have.”

Congress cut the current budgets for the Forest Service and Agriculture Department 5 percent under the mandated spending reductions, then added another 2.5 percent cut for fiscal 2013.

Even before Monday’s visit, fire experts were predicting a grim scenario of this summer’s fire season. A dry winter and early warming has created conditions for a fire season that could begin earlier than usual and burn as much as last year, where states like New Mexico and Oregon posted new records for burned acreage.

Crews already have fought blazes in California and Colorado. Barring any dramatic weather changes, the fire season is projected to start a month earlier than usual for Oregon, southern Washington, central Idaho and Montana.

Conditions are also ripe for above-normal fire potential in Arizona and New Mexico, but forecasters say late-season rains could tone down the southwest fire season at least until late summer.